


the department

by bluebeholder



Series: the accidental epic [7]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Background Case, Everyone Has A Giant Embarrassing Crush On Percival Graves, Fashion & Couture, Frostbite, Gen, POV Multiple, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 05:04:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12741549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: The year is 1924, and there's a mission on to track down a ring of hexers-for-hire. There's also a coat, and Tina having a crush, and Auror banter.Originally posted on tumblr.





	the department

**Author's Note:**

> I was going through my writing tag on tumblr and realized I had a couple series-compliant little fics about Aurors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement that fill a nice gap in 1924. So: we get Baby Auror Tina, a visit from Winfrith Simon (who is my favorite OC, okay), and a bit of touch-starved Graves in a damn handsome coat. You may recognize some of the Aurors from other fics of mine; they all wanted a turn on center stage. 
> 
> Sorry this is posting out of order and lacks any research notes: these two were prompts written for my birthday as gifts for fantastikobskurials and Anonymous, respectively. Brief and cute.

Word’s all over MACUSA when Winfrith arrives to work in the morning. 

“Did you see?” one of the boys from Accounting asks, cornering her in the elevator. “Did you see him?”

“Did I see who?” Winfrith asks, looking up at him in exasperation.

Jane the house-elf, carrying an intake tray of carbon copies, looks up at Winfrith in turn. “The Director!” she squeaks.

“No, I haven’t seen him, I’m on my way to the Auror Office now, if you two would stop bothering me!” Winfrith glares at them both halfheartedly. 

The boy from Accounting–-and what the hell is his name anyway–-persists. “I only wanted to know if you saw the coat!”

“The what now?”

“The coat! He’s got a new one!”

Winfrith’s eyes widen. She leans on the wall of the elevator. “A new coat.”

“Yes! Just–just wait ’til you see it, it’s the bee’s knees!”

Her boss, Winfrith thinks as the elevator goes down to the Auror Office, pausing to drop Jane off at Wand Permits, is dangerously close to becoming New York’s most popular fashion plate. He’s the most eligible man in the city, the most infamous confirmed bachelor in MACUSA’s history, _and_ the Director of Magical Security and Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to boot. He can do whatever he damn well pleases in terms of dress, and he does. First he’d dispensed with the loud colors so popular among the No-Maj men of his stature in favor of severe professional black, and then he’d gone and decided that hats are out of fashion, and that boots are in again, and…the list just keeps going. 

The worst part is that he has no idea he’s doing it.

She gets off the elevator and heads for the Auror Office, joining her partner Abigail Harding at their desk. “What’s going on?” Winfrith asks. 

“The Director got a new coat,” Abigail hisses. She’s eyeing his office door like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.

“And?”

“It’s _hot_.”

They’re all expecting a boots-on-the-ground operation today–it’s been a month of work to track down a highly professional crew of wizards and witches who’d been providing curse services on the sly to angry No-Majs, and Director Graves isn’t going to let anyone go in without him. But it’s the middle of January, which means he’ll be wearing the coat. 

Winfrith and Abigail are ready, since they’ll be front-lining this operation. Winfrith is under consideration to become head of the branch office out of Denver, and Abigail is working her way up the ladder with an eye toward working as one of the team leaders. So when Director Graves’ office door opens, they’re on their feet saluting before anyone else. 

“As you were,” he says, sweeping out into the bullpen. Winfrith’s sure her jaw is on the ground. He looks incredible. In that coat–in that coat he could be a damn king, if he wanted. He’s always handsome (it’s a rite of passage for an Auror of any sex to have a massive crush on Graves), but right now Winfrith’s pretty sure that she’d willingly walk barefoot over hot coals for him. The coat emphasizes his broad shoulders and cuts in to a narrow waist, swirling behind him as he strides through the office. 

Abigail recovers first. “Are we headed out, sir?”

“We are,” he says. “I assume you all know your assignments?”

Winfrith manages to rip her eyes away from him and glance around at the team. Calla Carter, Jared Firestone, Gladwyn Harris, Jackson Bishop, and Tina Goldstein. A decent crew, and with Graves it comes out to an even eight. They're all fine duelists, and Jackson a fair hand with healing. Tina's the only minor liability as a not-quite-senior-Auror-yet, but she's determined and smart. She'll be fine. 

"We do," Winfrith says, looking back at Graves.

He casts her a slight smile and Winfrith tries not to faint. How does the son of a bitch not know what he does to them all? “Then what are we waiting for?”

As he turns around and strides out the door, Winfrith sees poor Tina looking like her eyes are going to fall out of her head. She can’t blame the woman, though. 

Turns out that the coat looks just as good from behind.

***

Tina winces as Graves cups her hand in his and murmurs a spell to patch up her scraped-raw palms. “Sir, you should leave this for Jackson to take care of.”

“Tina,” Graves says sternly, looking up at her, “he’s busy with much worse injuries than yours. Let me take care of this.”

“All right,” Tina says in a small voice. She can hardly believe that she’s this close to Director Graves, especially in the wake of the fight they just had. He should be off cleaning up the damage to the building, making sure that all the warlocks are safely in custody–instead he’s here, kneeling next to her with his jacket off and shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, healing her stupidly-gotten cuts and bruises.

Graves finishes her palms and starts on her knees, which are full of gravel. “You took quite the dive,” he comments. Tina flinches as he carefully flicks a piece of grit away. “Made sausage out of yourself.”

“The warlock missed me, at least,” Tina says. She glances at the hole that his spell had punched in the wall, imagines that spell hitting her body, and shivers.

He smiles at her. “He did that. It was a good move.”

Tina inspects Graves covertly as he gets the last of the gravel out of her and heals the actual injuries. He’s massively favoring one side–had he gotten hit during the fight? She looks around. No one else is paying attention: Calla is dispelling the curses on Jared, Gladwyn and Winfrith are out performing a perimeter sweep, Abigail is on the ground with Jackson fixing up the hit she’d taken. So if Graves is hurt…Tina steels her nerve.

“There,” he says at last, sitting back on his heels. “I think you’re all right.”

“Are you, sir?” Tina asks.

For half a second, Tina swears that Graves looks stunned. Not just surprised: stunned. As if she’d hit him. But then it’s gone, and she wonders if she’d seen it at all. “I’m fine.”

“You’re a liar,” Tina says, summoning all her courage. 

Graves pauses. “…all right,” he says. “Yes, I took a hit. And what are you planning to do?”

Tina eyes him. “Fix it, if I can.”

He hesitates for a moment, then shakes his head and sits back, unbuttoning his shirt. “This won’t be pretty.”

“I saw the bones of my own knees today, sir,” Tina says, rolling her eyes. “I think I can handle it.”

It’s a patch of frostbite that blooms across the left side of his ribs from hip to pectoral, ice-white with patches of dead-looking black, blistered and swollen at the edges. Tina’s horrified. He was going to try to hide this? She meets his eyes and it looks like he’s challenging her to say anything. But even Tina’s nerve has to fail somewhere, so she just mutters something that sounds like an apology and gets to work.

She’s gentle as she can, using hands instead of wand when she can. Tina’s no medic, but she’s done her homework. She knows how to fix many injuries, and while he’ll still need to see a proper healer for this, she can at least relieve the pain.

And Tina is fairly perceptive. She can’t fail to notice the fact that, as she crouches beside him, he’s leaning slightly toward her. Indeed, it seems that Graves is relaxing as she banishes the simplest of the damage and brings relief for the pain–more relaxation than simple healing should provide. 

“I think I’m done, sir,” Tina says at last, sitting back.

He smiles at her again as he does up his shirt buttons. “Thank you, Tina,” he says. “You’re going above and beyond.”

“We’re both Aurors,” Tina feels compelled to point out. “This is how we’re supposed to treat each other.”

Graves looks at her for a long moment. “I guess you’re right,” he says, and climbs to his feet. He offers her a hand up and Tina takes it. She’s not sure if it’s her imagination or not that he holds on for just slightly too long, but she definitely isn’t imagining it when he squeezes her shoulder. “No more flying dives?”

Tina shrugs. “Someday I’ll have to dodge another curse,” she says flippantly. 

“I’ll be patching you up forever,” Graves says, shaking his head. He Summons his jacket and drapes it over his arm. “Go help Gladwyn and Winfrith, I’ll see to Abigail and Jared.”

As Tina turns to go, she can’t help but feel a warm burn of happiness. Sure, she hadn’t done the best in the fight today–but maybe she’d achieved something else. The Director is legendary for his marriage to his work. He’s friendly, charming, and personable, but has almost never done more than shaken someone’s hand in all the time that Tina’s been at MACUSA. The friendliness stops at the door of MACUSA, the camaraderie ends outside the Auror Office, and, though every Auror in the building will trust Director Graves with their lives, he’s still a mystery to many of them.

Tina feels like she might have made a real connection with him. Maybe she can help him more, someday. Maybe someday, she thinks with a silent laugh, they might actually be friends.


End file.
